Corey Stewart is to the conservative movement what that new kid who shows up in high school in the 11th grade, who’s got an overabundance of personality, is too attractive to not upset the established social pecking order, and who, to add insult to injury, gets incredibly good grades and can throw a football through a basketball net at 70 yards to boot, is to, well, high school drama. Maybe I’ve been too hasty at blaming Corey Stewart for all the drama he’s caused within the Republican Party of Virginia. Damnit, there I go again with the “he causes” line. I can’t help myself.
Corey Stewart has found a new way to be popular in politics and I agree with him that his “strategy” for social acceptance predates the ascension of Donald Trump. The problem with his popularity and the inexplicable reason (from his supporters perspective anyhow) why so many people despise his methods is: Corey Stewart acts like a Democrat. He low-balls issues, makes everything about the boiling-hot emotional center, parses every debate in terms of us versus them, and goes after anyone that gets in his way as another brick in the establishmentarian wall.
Corey Stewart is, himself, a battle flag and a call to battle. Conservatives fed up with losing, with being infantrymen in an army with no Generals or Lieutenants, have been desperately desiring a warrior-leader to lead them. However, for those well-versed in the actualities government, who know that such a general, if elected, would be forced to fall on his apocryphal sword are intolerant of the fantasy that all it takes is a gigantic pair of balls to make a difference in Virginia politics.
Do you know what your sin is, Corey Stewart? It’s pride.
You have been able to do something no one in the Republican Party in Virginia has been able to do in years – You’ve been able to unite the clans. You have found a way to bring all the frustration, all the disappointment, all the people who’ve fed on nothing but false promises and empty rhetoric together under one loud, stentorian flag. You’ve cemented your place in Virginia politics.
However, as it stands right now, there are people like me who would go door to door for the most liberal Republican you can imagine to stop you from ever being our nominee. Your people pretend as if this is because everyone like me are secret liberals, who simply had everyone fooled for years, as we alienated ourselves with our own establishment. If Corey Stewart is the best anti-establishment candidate in decades, then why aren’t people like me on board? This is a serious question that the Stewart campaign needs to answer, because your silly attempt at painting the Ron/Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Dave Brat, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie people as pro-establishment looks ridiculous – even to you.
Maybe the only reason Corey Stewart was able to gain so much support was because he got down in the gutters with the average voter, saying the things they were too ashamed to say on Facebook and Twitter, putting a strong face and a stern bottom lip to a movement of rebels too fed-up to worry about winning anymore – after all, what has winning got us?
I find myself in conversations with what I used to consider to be establishmentarians, trying to figure out how we can stop the populists from destroying the Republican Party, from dragging us into the gutters of identity politics. I find myself combing the Web for White Nationalists and the Bob Arum’s and Don King’s of political division in Virginia. Yet, the more I point out how the Don King’s of the right-wing are becoming a plague on all our houses, conservatives are only hearing…
Then they get excited.
Virginia’s conservatives want the Mike Tyson of conservative politics. Corey Stewart is the candidate that, if he has to, isn’t above biting off an ear or two. Stewart will stop at nothing to give the people what they want. What frightens me, is that what the people want is blood. If Corey Stewart, and his fans, want Ed Gillespie to earn their endorsement, they are probably going to have wait quite a while. Gillespie doesn’t box. Gillespie doesn’t get in the ring. Axle Rose would be disappointed. Gillespie runs a cookie-cutter campaign. Deal with it. The rest of us have to. Still…
I want to inspire Stewart’s people, but I can’t. I can wax intellectual about inalienable rights and federalism, but they don’t want to hear it. I can wax philosophical about the Scottish Enlightenment and the Conservative Tradition, but they couldn’t care less.
The truth is, the only one who can set Corey Stewart’s people on the straight path of political realism is Corey Stewart himself. We need Corey Stewart to bring the Republican Party together. His people are right. Gillespie can’t do it. Gillespie couldn’t even get my vote in a primary where I wanted nothing else but for Corey Stewart to lose. If no one hated Corey Stewart as much as I, then how come I couldn’t vote for Gillespie? The explanation is simple, I didn’t know what I would have been voting for. I voted for Frank Wagner. That asshole was honest and he didn’t even pretend to care about how people would see his campaign. He was Tom Cruz and Jack Nicholson.
Frank Wagner was honest. With Denver Riggleman out of the race, all I could do was vote for honesty. This doesn’t mean I liked what Frank was selling, but Frank wasn’t scared of the ideologues or self-righteous bloggers. So not only was he honest, he showed real bravery. Republicans need Corey Stewart to do the same thing. Corey Stewart has all the balls in his court. He can bring us together or tear us apart.
The Republican Party needs Corey Stewart to stay in the ring for the upcoming Royal Rumble.
https://youtu.be/hcE9wUFzlXo
It’s us or them. We’ve got to defeat Democrats before we start going after each other in our fight for the soul for the Republican Party of Virginia. Corey Stewart and his people need to realize that it’s not Corey’s position on the issues that so many of us were repulsed by. We were repulsed by the language, the tactics, the mannerism, the focus, the abandonment of everything so many of us have fought so hard for. Do you think we’re just going to give up the rational argument for conservatism because the disaffected found themselves a warrior? It will never, ever happen. We need Corey Stewart to join the ranks of the conservative movement, embrace reality, and fight the fights actually worth fighting!
There’s a place for Corey “Wyatt Earp” Stewart, and for the Doc Holliday’s and Johnny Ringo’s of the Conservative Movement under the same tent. If we decide to fight each other, then we all lose – forced to head out to California to strike gold only to pay 40% in taxes to the liberal establishment ruling over The Golden State.
However, if Stewart’s people want to continue reliving the 2016 State Convention, year after year, ad infinitum, where Shak Hill, Ted Cruz, and Ken Cuccinelli are your sworn enemies, as opposed to the Democrats or the GOP establishment, then let’s just hand the establishment the keys to power for the next hundred years and call it a day.
Don’t waste the best years of our lives.
We need some Community. ‘SUP!
